Girls: Beach House: Episode 7 Season 3 – TV Review

Last night’s Girls traveled, via jitney, to North Fork (not to be confused with the Hamptons, which are tacky according to Marnie). In “Beach House,” the girls spend a wonderful weekend together à la Sex and the City. Unfortunately, they’re too young and messed up to simply bond over cosmos. By the end of their getaway too many truths are told.

The Players:

Episode Title: “Beach House”

Marnie invites the girls to spend the weekend at her mother’s friend’s beach house. Her perfectionism quickly becomes stifling when Hannah runs into Elijah and his friends and invites them over. Before the night is out, the tension between the girls erupts and feelings are hurt.

The Good:

The Reality of Friends: One of the ugly truths about some friendships is that those friends don’t actually like each other. This is very much the case between Marnie and Hannah. Though they’ve shown some signs of love and concern in the past two seasons, lately they can’t seem to stand each other. The way that Dunham has gone about this is just brilliant.

Drunk Shoshanna: After one too many drinks, Shoshanna decides to get completely honest. She tells everyone exactly what she thinks of them, and holds nothing back. “You’re a fucking narcissist,” she tells Hannah when she goes on and on about having more sensitive skin than other people. She calls Jessa on her “AA bullshit,” saying, “Jess goes to rehab for five fucking seconds and we have to listen to everything she comes up with.” She lets Marnie know that her cooking is terrible. And then she drops the biggest bomb: “You guys never listen to me. You treat me like I’m a fucking cab driver. Seriously you have entire conversations in front of me like I’m invisible. And sometimes I wonder if my social anxiety is holding me back from meeting the people who would be actually right for me instead of a bunch of fucking whiny nothings as friends.” Everything Shoshanna says is on point. Sure, it’s a bit cruel, but her truth needed to be told.

The Charlie Mystery: Marnie finally reveals what happened between her and Charlie. She tells Elijah that Charlie called her and wanted to propose to her but that they had to talk about a few things first. Ten hours later he brought a work friend home to their apartment and started packing up his things without saying anything to her. Before he left the place, he looked at her and said, “I don’t love you, and I never did love you.” (And now she’s sleeping with one of his best friends.)

Best Lines:

“Jessa, I put you in the lighthouse because it’s bohemian.” – Marnie

“I can’t go in open water unless I’m menstruating.” – Jessa

“Shosh, you’re a cruel drunk.” – Jessa

The So-So:

The Marnie Parody: At the beginning of their little North Fork get-together, Marnie tells the girls, “You guys we’re so disconnected now. I thought this would just be a nice opportunity for us to have fun together and prove to everyone via Instagram that we can still have fun as a group.” This statement shows Marnie’s extreme desire to be acknowledged. It’s hilarious, but also too evident. Are we suppose to take this as a parody? Has Marnie become totally aware of her ridiculousness? Or is she really that oblivious to her pretentious behavior?

Overall:

“Beach House” was nothing like that Sex and the City episode where Charlotte gets crabs and Carrie runs into Big and his new 25-year-old girlfriend. The problems here run much deeper. But this episode had a little bit of everything. There was a lot dancing, swimming and drinking, and just enough of that cold-cruel reality we appreciate so much.

This was definitely my favorite episode so far this season – if for no other reason that this had the least amount of Hannah whining about her ‘inauthentic’ job and more insanity between the girls, and this was such a realistic portrayal of a girl’s healing retreat gone wrong! This was the first episode of the season that was truly relatable to like the first seasons.

The tensions between Marnie and Hannah in particular was great and totally like something ripped out of my own diaries. I also loved that they used “House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls” by The Weeknd in the background when Marnie calls over Hannah and asks her to ask the guys to leave instead Hannah invites them to dinner…and of course loved the awkward dinner that ensued.